In a move designed to further tightened the noose around examination cheats and their collaborators, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has resolved that, henceforth, no candidate would be allowed to sit the Board's Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) if they are not verified biometrically.

The decision, which emanated from a rigorous review of the 2022 UTME exercise, is borne out of the need to close all loopholes noticed during the examination. It is to be noted that examination malpractice is one of the major obstacles faced by all public examination bodies globally, hence the Board has consistently taken steps to confront this monster frontally.

It should be borne in mind that identity theft is one of the prominent channels that perpetrators used to achieve their nefarious aims. To combat this menace, the Board has taken full advantage of technology by introducing, among others, biometric capturing of a candidate's ten fingers during UTME Registration so as to ensure that there is a co nv i n c i n g ma t c h b e twe e n t h e fingerprints captured and those presented by the candidate at the examination venue. It is the conviction of the Board that any scenario other than this is an invitation to examination security breach.

Therefore, it is against the backdrop of this robust initiative of capturing all ten fingers of candidates rather than just one or two fingers from each hand, as was hitherto the case, that the Board had decided that the era whereby some candidates would present themselves at the examination venue and claim difficulty to be biometrically verified and expect the system to allow them to sit the examination is gone for good.

It should be recalled that the Board, out of magnanimity, had allowed such candidates to be rescheduled for the Mop-Up UTME, which was introduced in 2017. However, the Board has, of late, realised the futi l it y of such an arrangement after assessing the process and its impact on the entire examination value chain.

Consequently, the Management of the Board has regrettably resolved that all candidates must be verified to sit their examination as there would be no more Mop-Up UTME for whatever reason.

To cater for the few that may have genuine cases of inability to be captured, such candidates are to clearly indicate such difficulty from the point of registration so that they could be assigned to a centre situated within the National Headquarters of the Board for close monitoring.

This measure is not only to sanitise the examination process but also to ensure that the hard-earned reputation of the Board is not impugned.